Water
A History of Afghan Water Infrastructure and Resources
The majority of Afghanistan’s available water comes from snowpack at high elevations in the Hindu Kush mountain chain. Most of the snow to fall accumulates in the cold months and melts with spring heat, flooding the rivers and basins they feed with drainage from the mountains. To spread this wealth of water across the country, a vast system of canals has existed for hundreds of years. In 1911, British surveyor G.P. Tate noted that “the numerous canals which irrigate the valley of Herat deplete the waters of the [Herat River],” adding that “this work was destroyed by the troops of the Amir of Bokhara towards the close of the 18th century, but if has been restored by the Russians and the Tsar's private domains in that district are a valuable property on which great results have been achieved by irrigation” (Tate). All to say that like much of Afghan infrastructure, water supply is in constant limbo with perpetual conflict: destruction of systems, out-migration of those operating canals, and depletion of groundwater all play roles.
Water, wherever available in Afghanistan, drives population growth; Kabul’s rapid expansion is in part due to its fertile grounds that are fed by the Kabul river. Water is a powerful resource, and has been the foundation of Afghan populations for millenia.
The chart above depicts the four major river basins within Afghanistan. The Kabul basin is the most densely hydrated of the four. Its area is less than a quarter of the Amu Darya's, yet they store roughly the same volume of water. Despite the region's wetness, Kabul's rapid population growth - in part driven by this abundance of water - has stretched the capabilities of the city's public water infrastructure. Currently, the existing drinking water distribution system in Kabul supplies water to less than 20 percent of the urban population (USAID, 2018). One sees below the size of the major basins within Afghanistan. Important to note is that much of some basins, namely that of the Amu Darya, lay outside of Afghan borders in neighboring countries like Pakistan.
Regional Water Availability
The fact that more than 90 percent of Afghanistan’s water consumption serves to irrigate land for agriculture (Rout, 2008) contextualizes the country’s struggle with drinking water. Subsistence farming and similar food or animal production makes up a large portion of their GDP, and while only around 30 percent of the water systems in place use surface water like snowmelt, these systems supply water to 86 percent of irrigated farmland (Rout, 2008). Many of these surface water canal systems are governed by a local hierarchy of water officials, headed by a mirab bashi, the official who decides water allocation for main canal systems. But much of this water use is agricultural. The Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees (DACAAR) stated in 2018 that 45.5% of the population has immediate access to safe drinking water in Afghanistan, leaving some of the population to spend 4-7 hours to collect their drinking water from ditches, canals and rivers which, untreated, may hold pollution or water borne diseases. Even in Kabul, the nation’s largest city, water infrastructure was designed for a smaller population; resulting overconsumption accelerated the rate of groundwater-level decrease in the city to more than 4 m/yr in some areas between 2008 and 2012 (Mack, 2013).
Shrinking Ice Caps of the Hindu Kush - Future Water Resource Management
To further complicate Afghan water system development, the glaciers of the Hindu Kush-Himalayan mountain change are being threatened by a changing climate: an assessment released in early 2019 notes that without changes in greenhouse gas emissions, the entire mountain range could lose two-thirds of its glaciers (Wester et al., 2019), while a model of the Pamirs in eastern Afghanistan projects a loss of approximately 45% by 2100 (Shuichi et al., 2014). Changes of this degree would be catastrophic for a country as dependent as Afghanistan, depleting not only the people of water, but too the fertile (for now) farmlands and steppe. This is a cascading effect that doesn’t stop with water: more volatile seasons would increase both floods and droughts while condensing the wet season, a drop in the region’s biodiversity, and a potentially international decline of agricultural productivity.
Beyond the mountainous challenges, Afghan groundwater is decreasing too, especially in population-dense basins like the Kabul.
Shared Infrastructure and Environmental Conflict
Afghanistan, a landlocked country in south central Asia, holds the headwaters for four of the region’s major rivers. Barring the Helmand river, the major rivers all continue their paths outside of Afghanistan. This makes the rivers shared resources by default; like Afghanistan, the majority of central Asian countries are landlocked too. Though landlocked, Afghanistan is not without water although international relations with bordering countries - Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan - all limit Afghan ownership of the rivers originating within their own borders. The high-demand waters that originate in Afghanistan are not entirely Afghan, they are instead shared. This means Afghanistan’s developments of both hydro power and water storage could create conflict with other nations dependent on the same rivers. There exists then a need to to generate power and store water without entirely depleting resources for the downstream countries.
This potential conflict is multidimensional. Disputes over the allocation of water are the second-most commonly cited cause of local conflict after land (UNEP); war has already led to the dilapidation of irrigation networks. The United Nations’ Afghanistan committee lays out the roots of this conflict: “Given the critical importance of water to the agricultural sector, and the environmental and structural constraints on access to water sources for agricultural uses, internal disputes over water rights frequently arise among land owners, farmers, and neighboring villages and provinces. The stakes involved in these disputes are high as many rural communities depend on reliable access to water sources to grow the crops and nourish the livestock on which their lives and livelihoods depend” (UNAMA, 14).
Three challenges exist for the future of afghan water use: increased demand, a changing climate leads to varying/unpredictable water levels, and building up water infrastructure for the country’s future.
Citations
USAID. (2018, January 08). Kabul Urban Water Supply. Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/fact-sheets/kabul-urban-water-supply-kuws
Rout, B. (2008). How the water flows: a typology of irrigation systems in Afghanistan, Issue paper series Kabul: Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit. Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://cropwatch.unl.edu/documents/WOL_Irrigation_Typology_Afghanistan.pdf
Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees. (2018). Water resources under threat. Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://www.dacaar.org/functions/pages/5_45thIAH.php
Mack, T. J., Chornack, M. P., & Taher, M. R. (2013). Groundwater-level trends and implications for sustainable water use in the Kabul Basin, Afghanistan. Environment Systems and Decisions, 33(3), 457-467. doi:10.1007/s10669-013-9455-4
Kure, Shuichi & Jang, Seungsun & Ohara, Noriaki & Kavvas, M & Chen, Z.-Q. (2013). Hydrologic Impact of Regional Climate Change for the Snowfed and Glacierfed River Basins in the Republic of Tajikistan: Hydrological Response of flow to Climate Change. Hydrological Processes. 27. 10.1002/hyp.9535.
Wester, P., Mishra, A., Mukherji, A., & Shrestha, A. B. (2019). The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment. ICIMOD, HIMAP. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-92288-1.
UNEP. (n.d.). Natural Resource Management and Peacebuilding in Afghanistan. Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://postconflict.unep.ch/publications/UNEP_Afghanistan_NRM_guidance_char t.pdf
UNITED NATIONS ASSISTANCE MISSION IN AFGHANISTAN. (2016). An Assessment of Afghanistan’s Legal Framework Governing Water for Agriculture. UNAMA Rule of Law Unit. Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://unama.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/2016_19_10_water_rights_final_v2.pdf.